2020 Decluttering Thread

[disneysteve]

Yesterday and today I took care of a number of tasks and projects that have been sitting around. Nothing big but a bunch of little things including cleaning out email, redeeming a Groupon voucher I bought almost 2 months ago, putting away two boxes of photos that I had sorted and decluttered ages ago, filing all of the year-end financial statements, and more.

I also got a buyer for a Facebook Marketplace item I listed a while ago. We're supposed to be meeting tomorrow morning so hopefully that goes through. It's for a collection of over 600 baseball cards that have been sitting on my desk for weeks. I'll be glad to have them gone.

[disneysteve]

Just sold my Facebook item so that’s gone and I’ve got $35 in my pocket.

[disneysteve]

I have a stack of 30-40 old collector magazines. I've sold a bunch on ebay in the past and then kind of lost interest but I just listed 10 more for sale. I'll try and get the rest listed later today.

[scfr]

This morning while catching the morning news I:

• Did a quick cleanout of my purse.
• Rolled coins, yielding one roll each of quarters, nickels, and pennies ($12.50). I'll take them next time I go to the bank ... so that I don't forget, I put them where I keep my "going out the door" items (purse, keys, dog leash, etc).
• Cut up some old credit cards and IDs. One is metal and can't be cut with scissors so I did a quick on-line search and realized that the "best" solution, since I don't want to resort to using power tools that I don't even own, is to mail it back to the issuing bank. Left a note for DH asking him to call since the card is in his name.

[disneysteve]

I have a stack of 30-40 old collector magazines. I've sold a bunch on ebay in the past and then kind of lost interest but I just listed 10 more for sale. I'll try and get the rest listed later today.

I ended up listing 20 that day.

I sold 3 today that I'll ship out tomorrow! Just over $8 profit and they're going to someone who will appreciate them.

ETA: I just listed 5 more and scanned the rest so they're ready to list.

[disneysteve]

I sold 3 more items on eBay today. We’re out of town but I’ll ship them on Monday.

[cypher1]

While moving out I got rid of more older electronics I don't use, cables, older cookware, shoes. Gave an older battery jumper pack to my friend, practically new suit case/carry-on to a niece.

[rob62521]

Does nagging my husband count? I call his table next to his chair the Abyss because once he puts something there, it is often lost. Seriously, I did convince him to go through his piles. Thirty minutes later he had gotten rid of a bunch of stuff, most went into recycling.

I went through my closet and got rid of a bunch of things since I received some new clothes for my birthday. I intend to go farther and get rid of a few more things since I'm more conscious of what I tend to wear and what I won't.

[disneysteve]

Does nagging my husband count?

Sure, if it resulted in less clutter, which it did.

We came home today from a weekend getaway. As usual, after spending a few days in a hotel with almost no clutter, I got home and wanted to clean. I removed a few items from my dresser, threw out some old receipts and shopping lists, and just listed 7 more magazines on ebay. I also packed the 3 that sold the other day so I can mail them tomorrow. I'm sure I'll do some other stuff before the day is done.

[disneysteve]

I just listed my daughter's old graphing calculator on Facebook Marketplace. They seem to sell pretty well on ebay for $35-45 plus shipping. I'm going to try and get $35 selling it locally but I'll take less if someone offers.

[creditcardfree]

I just listed my daughter's old graphing calculator on Facebook Marketplace. They seem to sell pretty well on ebay for $35-45 plus shipping. I'm going to try and get $35 selling it locally but I'll take less if someone offers.

Yes, I sold my daughter's calculator for $40 last year. No shipping involved as she found another student on campus that needed it.

[creditcardfree]

I did a rather major declutter (well for as much as someone that is a minimalist can do) at the end of January. I have nearly 20 items listed on eBay or FB sale groups. I had two sales prior on eBay for listings that have been up for many, many weeks. Eventually someone finds just what you have to sell. I'm dropping off two more that sold over the weekend at the post office today. We live on a base, so I did put a lot of items on my porch for free on Saturday, all but a book and three hangers were hauled off in less than 4 hours. Some of those items weren't exactly good enough quality to donate, but for free they seemed to be worth it to the the recipients. And the nice thing is they didn't end up in the landfill quite yet.

[scfr]

Warning: This will be long.

New Year's resolutions may be fading away. But the weather is colder so more time may be spent indoors, spring cleaning season is fast approaching, and yard/garage sale season will be here before you know it. I want to encourage those who are decluttering to keep up the good work!

DH & I moved to be closer to my elderly mother and disabled brother one year ago. For the past year, my decluttering energy has been focused on helping my mom. We still have a long way to go, but enough progress has been made that I think I can now share about it in a positive way ... in other words, not just a long rant .

One of the first things I did was clear out the massive pileup of stuff on the floor of her walk-in closet so that she can now actually walk in to it to access her closet and shelving. Items are now stored on the shelving that had spread out to the floor of her bathroom and bedroom. There is still way to much stuff in her bedroom, but she now has a wide path all the way around her bed and her bathroom and closet floors are clear. She is experiencing fewer falls. She maintains that the previously-frequent falls in the bedroom were not due to her clutter issues (she claims she could push her walker over stuff just fine), but I don't believe it for a second. [Side note: When you start providing care for an elderly family member, you learn that you need to believe what you see with your own eyes and, sadly, treat with much skepticism what they tell you.] She has had a couple recent falls in her "office" where things have started piling up as we have focused on other areas. It feels a bit like playing whack-a-mole at times, but overall we are making progress and the frequency of the falls has steeply declined. This not only makes my mother's quality of life (and mine too … fewer falls = fewer trips to the ER), but it saves all of you Medicare-supporting American taxpayers money.

In the past year, we have cleared out one storage unit (still have one more to go), saving her $100+ per month. Of the items in the storage unit, approx 10-15% has been deemed worth saving. The rest has been shredded, recycled, trashed, donated, or sold. We are talking about a woman of somewhat limited means. It makes me sad to think of the ways that money could have been put to much better use over the years.

The clearing out of the old foodstuffs? I'll spare you the gory details. The amount of waste was sad but necessary. I'm sure the health index of the house rose dramatically in a short period of time.

To date I've found $560 + change ... yes, cash! I found her lost driver's license which may have helped her avoid trouble or fines when she was told to surrender it. I've found sheets of postage stamps, greeting cards and other small items she is using and doesn't have to buy, family heirlooms that were buried amongst useless items, and books that had been loaned by friends. I've found documents that definitely needed to be shredded (and they have been) for the protection of not only my mother.

My sister put together one small garage sale. The net proceeds weren't great (I think it was around $50), but every dollar counts and it meant things that hadn't been used in ages out of the house ... I pulled my car up as the sale was ending, loaded unsold items in to the car, and took them immediately to Goodwill.

Mom's buying less (still buying too much in my opinion and in the opinion of my siblings, but still it's less) because she can actually find stuff sometimes. She still loses things and buys things I know she doesn't need, but it's getting better.

As I said, we still have a long way to go. But we've slowly picked up momentum. As we have worked out "good" ways to part with things (by good I mean ways that align with what my mom values), it has gotten easier for her to let go of some things. She is no longer buying gifts for my sisters or me; we made a list of family heirlooms we would like to have and she has started gifting those to us for Christmas and birthdays. The circle of gifting has expanded to include more distant family. Some items just get donated to Goodwill, but some that are harder to part with get donated to specific organizations Mom has supported over the years, even though that requires a bit more effort. We've started putting items aside for another garage sale in the late spring and the thought of passing some of her things on to someone who will appreciate them while at the same time bringing in a little cash is gaining appeal for her. I am seeing her have some real breakthrough epiphanies (for example: realizing that she is no longer the woman who is going to do x, y, or z so it's OK to let go of the related items). And I've learned that the best thing to do is just nod and smile or acknowledge the pain connected to the realization and be supportive and never ever say "I could have told you that."

Now that I think I can do it without sounding whiny or bitter, I may start sharing more of my "helping mom" decluttering experiences on this thread.

P.S. - If anyone is going through a similar experience with a parent, or would like to avoid becoming that parent, I recommend the book "Let It Go: Downsizing Your Way to a Richer, Happier Life" by Peter Walsh. Cheers.

[disneysteve]

Great story scfr! Kudos to you for devoting the time and energy, both physical and emotional, to tackle all of that. It's hard enough dealing with your own clutter. Trying to manage someone else's is a whole different story.

Fortunately, we dealt with the vast majority of that when my mom sold her house 13 years ago and move to a senior apartment. I'm hoping that she won't ever have to move again, like to a nursing home, and that the next clean out will be after she's gone. Not that it will be easy but if she's no longer with us, we won't have to manage her emotional attachment to things in the process. And, of course, she has way less stuff than when she was in the house, and most of it is trash to us. We'll donate what we can and have the rest hauled out of there. I don't even care if we get anything for it. I'd be happy to call one of the junk removal places and pay them to take it all. There may be a few furniture items worth donating to one of the places that will come pick it up but I'm sure most of the stuff can go.

[Like2Plan]

I have been working on de-cluttering our taxes for about 10 years. Ten years ago, I started off by selling almost all of our individual stocks. I still thank myself every tax season. The past couple of years I have been focusing on reducing the number of accounts we have along with Roth conversions. I know sometime in the future I will be thanking myself, but this year was a pretty rough one in terms of tricky tax forms (and all the rollovers and conversions, etc).

DH started his 4th 401k this Jan. We distilled it down to just that one and everything else was rolled over just before year's end. Now DH is only paying one administrative fee ($43.00) for his 401k.

Now that we have fewer accounts, my next goal is to streamline our paperwork into one notebook for me and one notebook for DH's stuff. (Currently, we have 9). Shredding all the redundant paperwork is going to feel real good.